Ravenswood’s Mint Home Furniture, Neighboring Dry Cleaners Devastated By Fire

RAVENSWOOD — Jessie Shay was in the process of opening her vintage furniture store Friday when she caught a whiff of something burning. Within minutes, it was clear that her popular store — and her life’s work — would disappear behind a mass of black smoke.

On Friday afternoon, an accidental fire devastated both Mint Home, Shay’s furniture store at 4949 N. Damen Ave., and Crystal Cleaners next door, 4953 N. Damen Ave., before the fire department put out the blaze, Shay and Fire Department officials said. No injuries were reported, Fire Department officials confirmed on X.

Both businesses are left to pick up the pieces, with Mint Home losing all of its merchandise in the blaze.

Shay’s former business partner, Keisha Youngblood, set up a GoFundMe on Saturday to help pay for damages to Shay’s store, which sold refurbished vintage furniture. More than $9,600 has been raised out of a $12,000 goal as of Monday.

Shay was returning to her store about 1 p.m. Friday from a lumber yard in Oak Park and saw that a customer was waiting on her arrival because she usually opened an hour earlier.

“God, it smells like fire in here,” she recalled saying as she stepped inside the store that afternoon.

The smell of smoke was unmistakable, so Shay frantically searched for the source before running out the front, where she met a group of distressed employees from Crystal Cleaners, the dry-cleaning business that shares a wall with Mint Home. The staff told her the dry cleaner’s boiler was on fire and that anyone inside the furniture store needed to evacuate immediately.

Still and Box 4949 north Damen now struck out. Cleaners heavy damage with collapse. No injuries pic.twitter.com/UH94dlt7mS

“The ladies next door were panicked to a point at which I thought the building might explode,” Shay said. “At this point, [my customer] came outside, and I told him, ‘Go, go, go. Just leave.'”

Crystal Cleaners was engulfed in flames before smoke began to pour through Mint Home’s ceiling, Shay said. It didn’t take long for clouds of thick smoke to overtake both businesses.

“I was devastated,” Shay said.

Firefighters responded quickly to the fire and sent six vehicles, Shay said. By 2:35 p.m., the fire was extinguished, according to the Fire Department.

The Ravenswood dry-cleaning business was almost entirely destroyed in the fire, experiencing a total roof collapse and a decimated interior. Representatives for the business could not be reached Sunday.

Mint Home, on the other hand, saw a partial roof collapse and extensive fire damage – but perhaps the worst impact of the fire for Shay was on her merchandise. All of the furniture for sale at Mint Home was either directly damaged or trapped the stench of the fire in the wood, in turn ruining the piece.

For the items in her store that had already been purchased, Shay must reimburse her customers and get rid of inventory.

“I really hope that the money raised by the GoFundMe can help me pay back customers who already bought furniture,” Shay said.

Mint Home meant everything to Shay. She had personally selected, transported and refurbished each piece of furniture on sale at the store by hand or with the help of Youngblood, who sold her half of the company last year.

“We’re basically sisters,” Shay said.

A post shared by Mint Home (@minthomechicago)

The pair met as servers at the now-shuttered Gold Coast restaurant Bistro 110 and shared a kinship for vintage furniture and design. In 2009, they each invested $50 into the business and Mint Home grew from there, first opening on 2117 W. Irving Park Road before moving to its current Damen Avenue location.

Shay gave birth to her daughter on the same day that the original Irving Park Road location opened and said the shop was “basically a day care for my daughter. We brought her in every day.”

Shay said she plans to reopen the store, although it may have to be in a new location. The outpouring of support in the days following the blaze has been a “silver lining” around the otherwise soul-crushing loss.

In some ways, the gravity of the situation has been grounding, she said.

“Having everybody show their support in this time has just been overwhelming,” Shay said. “It’s wild to see how many people’s lives I’ve touched. People have told me that they’ve had my furniture for years and that their kids have grown up with, say, a dresser I’ve sold them.

“I’m realizing that when people write stuff under an Instagram post sending you thoughts and prayers, a lot of times we can say, what does that do? Well, as the person people are sending their thoughts and prayers to, it really does mean the freaking world.”

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